Advisory Board

Emily Banner, Co-founder Rachel Barenblat, Co-founder Daniel Beck, Designer Angela Cardinali Patty Crane, Poet Lois Daunis, Owner, Papyri Books

Glenn Drohan, Editor, The North Adams Transcript Patricia Lee Lewis, Poet Susan Quinn, Author Sandy Ryan, Co-founder Jim Shepard, Author Rick Spalding

Emily Banner

Emily Banner recently completed her first novel, and is now learning her way around the publishing world while she works on a second book. She holds an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she also taught writing and literature classes, and a BA in English from Williams College. While in Chicago she worked at the Guild Complex, an award-winning cross-cultural literary center, on which Inkberry is loosely modeled. She now lives in Savoy with her husband, Daniel, and their dog, Frank. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in The Women’s Times, Pif Magazine, Slant, and The Transcript.

Rachel Barenblat

Rachel Barenblat holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She was one of Inkberry’s co-founders, and served as the organization’s executive director from 2000-2006; sh served on the board until the end of 2007. Before starting Inkberry, she worked as editor of The Women’s Times, the region’s monthly paper for women. She is author of three chapbooks of poems: the skies here, published by Pecan Grove Press in 1995, What Stays, published as part of the Bennington Writing Seminars Alumni Chapbook Series in 2002, and chaplainbook, published by Laupe House in 2006. Her work has appeared in a range of journals and anthologies, among them Lilith, Sojourner, The New Orleans Review and The Women’s Seder Sourcebook. She is currently a student in the Aleph rabbinic program, and maintains a weblog called Velveteen Rabbi. She and her husband Ethan live in Lanesboro. Find her online at velveteenrabbi.com.

Daniel Beck

Daniel is married to Inkberry founder Emily Banner, which goes some way towards explaining what he’s doing here. For the past six years, he has worked as an independent software developer and designer specializing in UI/IA work on distance-learning products, including ANGEL Learning, Pearson’s Companion Websites, McGraw-Hill’s Online Learning Centers, and eCollege’s eCourse and eCampus (as well as several other products beginning with the letter “e”.)

He would like to take this opportunity to mention that any problems with the Inkberry website are entirely his fault.

Angela Cardinali

Angela Cardinali is a business development and marketing expert with 12 years of experience establishing sustainable business paradigms, effectively managing teams and creating new processes and projects for a number of non- and for-profit businesses. Her recent role as managing director of Images Cinema was instrumental in the development of a sustainable revenue model to secure the future of a non-profit independent film house. In addition to establishing and growing an annual membership base, she instituted a successful volunteer program, a local ‘new economy’ grant fund and ongoing corporate sponsorship to preserve the theater’s existence. Cardinali’s entertainment experience includes directing the inaugural publicity plan for House of Seagram’s 44-city Crown Royal Country Music Series and managing public relations for VIBE Magazine’s Magic Johnson concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City. She works on the production of special events for Discovery Networks and helped launch a number of independent film releases to the New York market. Cardinali was one of the founding producers of the annual Williamstown-based music festival JazzTown. She was also Chairperson of Williamstown’s Holiday Walk Weekend 1999, implementing new marketing programs and amplifying the number and quality of events. Cardinali serves on the Board of Directors for Images Cinema and the Oldcastle Theatre Company of Bennington, Vermont, where she leads the theatre company’s marketing committee. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in International Business from Hofstra University.

Patty Crane

Patty is a registered nurse and health educator who holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of journals and anthologies, including Atlanta Review (International Publication Prize 2005), Bellevue Literary Review, Calyx, RUNES, The MacGuffin, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Two Rivers Review (Winner of 2004 Poetry Prize), West Branch, and Crossing Paths: An Anthology of Poems by Women (Mad River Press, 2002), as well as reviews and essays in Poetry International, The Writer’s Chronicle, and The Women’s Times. She lives in Windsor with her husband, two daughters and one slightly chubby dog, all of whom are all about to embark on a three year adventure living in Sweden.

Lois Daunis

Lois Daunis is the new owner of Papyri Books, but she is no stranger to the book trade. As a college student she worked for an antiquarian bookseller in Worcester and later managed two bookstores in Central Massachusetts. Since then, she has been an English teacher and middle school administrator. She has four incredible children, the finest husband in the world, and now spends her days at Papyri Books on Main Street in North Adams with her dog, Sallie Mae.

Glenn Drohan

Glenn Drohan, editor of The North Adams Transcript a regional daily newspaper based in North Adams, has been a journalist for 22 years. He previously worked as editor of the Advocate and managing editor of the Brattleboro Reformer, after long stints at The Berkshire Eagle as bureau chief and reporter and at the Transcript as reporter and copy editor. He has won awards for news writing and editorial writing but keeps his poetry locked in a closet, where it belongs. He has mentored numerous journalism interns for the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and is a member of the mentoring team for Ghanashyam Ojha, the Daniel Pearl Fellow who visited the Berkshires last spring from Nepal. He also serves on the Daniel Pearl Scholarship Committee for New England Newspapers Inc. He attended Hamilton College, North Adams State College and other colleges on the nine-year plan and admits to being a veteran of both the U.S. Army and Navy. He lives in North Adams with his soul mate, Marsha Landry, and their two cats, Calvin and Hobbes. He preaches strong verbs and the active voice and will sing at campfires.

Patricia Lee Lewis

Patricia lives and works at Patchwork Farm Retreat in western Massachusetts, and leads writing retreats and workshops at Patchwork Farm, throughout the United States, and at sacred sites around the world. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College, and completed her undergraduate degree at Smith College, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1970. Patricia has spent much of her life as an advocate: for women, for civil rights, for peace, for a healthy environment, for small farms and rural communities, for the arts. Born and raised in Texas, she moved north years ago with her children. She has been a business owner, tree farmer, director of several organizations, including women’s centers, community economic development corporations, district congressional offices, and served as an elected county commissioner. In 1985, when she joined Pat Schneider’s Amherst Writers & Artists writing workshop, she finally found the courage to write for others to read. Today she is a Senior Partner in Amherst Writers & Artists, and a member of the Berkshire Writers Room, the Texas Writers League and the American Poetry Society. Her poetry, fiction and feature articles have appeared in journals & anthologies, The Los Angeles Times, Hampshire Life, and The Boston Sunday Globe. In July 2001, she was supported by a grant from the Chester Cultural Council under the auspices of the Massachusetts Cultural Council to perform her poems to a full house to benefit the Miniature Theatre of Chester.

Susan Quinn

Bio coming soon!

Sandy Ryan

Sandy, one of Inkberry’s co-founders, is an essayist and prose poet; her work has been published in The Berkshire Review, The Women’s Times, and several online webzines. Her current projects include a weblog on body image (Vast Tracts), and dogged attempts at writing SF. As an editor, Sandy has worked at Beacon Press in Boston, and as an editor/correspondent at the now-defunct Streetmail.com. She has taught religious history, language arts, Tarot cartomancy, and several non-fiction classes for Inkberry. Sandy currently lives just outside Washington, DC, where she is the website editor for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Jim Shepard

Jim is the author of five novels — Flights (Knopf, 1983), Paper Doll (Knopf, 1986), Lights Out in the Reptile House (Norton, 1990), Kiss of the Wolf (Harcourt Brace, 1994) and Nosferatu (Knopf, 1998) — and one book of short stories: Batting Against Castro (Knopf, 1996). He also co-edited with Ron Hansen You’ve Got to Read This, an anthology of short stories, (HarperCollins) and with Amy Hempel Unleashed: Poems by Writers’ Dogs (Crown). His short fiction has appeared, among other places, in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, The Paris Review,and TriQuarterly. He lives with his wife, Karen, their two sons, Aidan and Emmett, and their 110-pound Labrador, Birch, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he teaches at Williams College.

Rick Spalding

Rick has served as Chaplain and Coordinator of Community Service at Williams College since the summer of 2000. He came to Williamstown after 12 years in Boston, where he divided his time between parish ministry (at the Church of the Covenant, a federated Presbyterian/Congregational congregation in the Back Bay) and campus ministry (as a denominational chaplain at Harvard). He had previously served parishes in Albany, NY and New York City, and taught religion at Trinity School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Rick is an ordained pastor of the Presbyterian Church, USA. His ministry has also included elementary and high school teaching, community theatre, several trips to Central America, and singing bass in just about any choir that will have him. He is a co-parent of an exemplary Chesapeake Bay retriever.